Up until now my guide for the Camino has been mostly Google and Facebook. I joined a group called Camino de Santiago St James Walkers Group, link here where members share advice, knowledge, and encouragement.
I also bought what used to be considered the definitive guide to The Way, a Pilgrims Guide by John Brierley. It was large, about A4 sized, spiral bound and I don't fancy lugging it around.
While hanging out with my brother-in-law, Aaron Schulz, who is walking the Te Araroa Trail, the South Island from Jan to April next year we were swapping stories about planning. We were talking about pack weights (my test pack came in at 11kg, his initial weight is 30kg!), solar panels (pros, cons, fixing to pack) and mapping. He has put me onto a wonderful app for my phone called "Backcountry Naviation Pro". http://backcountrynavigator.com/
For less than the price of a guidebook, at $18.99US I thought this was a pretty good buy.
You can download all the topographical maps along your planned route and then track yourself by GPS. You will soon see if you are lost! Together we downloaded a GPS route for St Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela, and my phone has been humming away all night downloading the relevant maps. What a great tool. A case for modern technology if ever there was one. It seems to cover most of the world.
It is of course dependant on your phone having a charge at all times, where is where solar panels and battery chargers come into play.
John Brierly's book has a lot of interesting information that is extra to just the route, including stories, points of interest and more, and I am still considering photographing each page and downloading into a PDF to load onto my Kindle, if I can work out how to do that!
For now, I feel pretty sorted.
I also bought what used to be considered the definitive guide to The Way, a Pilgrims Guide by John Brierley. It was large, about A4 sized, spiral bound and I don't fancy lugging it around.
While hanging out with my brother-in-law, Aaron Schulz, who is walking the Te Araroa Trail, the South Island from Jan to April next year we were swapping stories about planning. We were talking about pack weights (my test pack came in at 11kg, his initial weight is 30kg!), solar panels (pros, cons, fixing to pack) and mapping. He has put me onto a wonderful app for my phone called "Backcountry Naviation Pro". http://backcountrynavigator.com/
You can download all the topographical maps along your planned route and then track yourself by GPS. You will soon see if you are lost! Together we downloaded a GPS route for St Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela, and my phone has been humming away all night downloading the relevant maps. What a great tool. A case for modern technology if ever there was one. It seems to cover most of the world.
It is of course dependant on your phone having a charge at all times, where is where solar panels and battery chargers come into play.
John Brierly's book has a lot of interesting information that is extra to just the route, including stories, points of interest and more, and I am still considering photographing each page and downloading into a PDF to load onto my Kindle, if I can work out how to do that!
For now, I feel pretty sorted.
Funny you should mention the PDF. That's exactly what I did with the definitive guide to the te araroa to save the weight of carrying it. Of course it does mean all your eggs in your phone basket, to mix a terrible metaphor.
ReplyDeleteYes, as long as the phone doesn't crap out! aarrgghhh
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